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  <title>Creating Ant buildfiles</title>
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  <h1>Creating Ant buildfiles</h1>
  <p>Ant buildfiles are just text files, so the most straightforward way to create an Ant buildfile in Eclipse is:</p>
  <ol>
    <li><b>File &gt; New &gt; File</b>.</li>
    <li>Enter a name for the file.</li>
    <li>Click <b>Finish</b>.</li>
  </ol>
  <p>By default the <a href="../reference/ref-anteditor.htm">Ant editor</a> only has an association with
  <code>build.xml</code> named files. As the user you can designate the Ant editor to be considered for all xml
  files.</p>
  <ol>
    <li>File associations can be set using the <a class="command-link" href=
    'javascript:executeCommand("org.eclipse.ui.window.preferences(preferencePageId=org.eclipse.ui.preferencePages.FileEditors)")'>
    <img src="PLUGINS_ROOT/org.eclipse.help/command_link.svg" alt="Opens the File Associations preference page">
    <b>General &gt; Editors &gt;File Associations</b></a> preference page.</li>
    <li>Add an association between <code>*.xml</code> and the <a href="../reference/ref-anteditor.htm">Ant
    editor</a>.</li>
  </ol>
  <p>Now, as long as the file has a .xml extension, Eclipse will consider it to be a possible Ant buildfile, and will
  enable Ant-related actions when it is selected. Until a file has Ant buildfile content, you will need to open it
  using <b>Open With &gt; <a href="../reference/ref-anteditor.htm">Ant Editor</a></b>.</p>
  <p>An example is the use of <a href="qs-92_project_builders.htm">project builders</a>, where an Ant buildfile is
  created for an Eclipse plug-in that contains predefined targets that are useful for deploying the plug-in.</p>
  <h3 class="related">Related tasks</h3><a href="qs-83_edit.htm">Editing Ant buildfiles</a><br>
  <a href="qs-84_run_ant.htm">Running Ant buildfiles</a><br>
  <a href="qs-85_ant_configs.htm">Saving &amp; Reusing Ant options</a><br>
  <a href="qs-84_run_ant.htm">Running Ant buildfiles</a><br>
  <a href="qs-93_project_builder.htm">Creating a project builder Ant buildfile</a><br>
  <a href="qs-92_project_builders.htm">Ant buildfiles as project builders</a><br>
  <a href="qs-94_run_pj.htm">Executing project builders</a><br>
  <a href="qs-95_external_tools.htm">External tools</a><br>
  <a href="qs-96_non_ant_pjs.htm">Non-Ant project builders</a><br>
  <a href="qs-97_standalone_ets.htm">Stand-alone external tools</a>
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